Engine Effect

Im asuming most of you know the engine effect on a pod racer? Yes, well I need to duplicate such an effect, however I cant seem to configure the particle emiters quite right. The only tutorial on particles I can find is for MDL editing rather than in MAX 5.2...

Whats the best way to achive my desired effect?

cant really recall the podracers emitters effect (then again, that movie was ****** so that prolly escaped my mind, that gay ass kid shoulda crashed and burned), screeny? . In any case I suggest a modelspace emitter

Heh, I agree the movie was "****."

Screenshots attached. Someone suggested to me I use a cone and animate it, but im having difficulties understanding how I can make it realistic enough.

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

Screenshot 3

Screenshot 4

Screenshot 5

Please note many of these are artist concepts and only the final screenshot is actually from the movie. However the effect I think would be most apropreate is that which can be seen in Screenshot 1.

You know that is quite easy to do with a ribbon emitter (for smoke trial) , a plane that is billboarded for flame/glow effect and a particle emitter for a few flames, yet your model has to be real fast then to make it look nice (around 1000 speed, yup, like missile speeds)

Yea, in MAX ive got movespeed set to 1000, but of course in game we can only make units go around 600...Its a shame. Neverthless dont worry about the smoke trail, but how can I make the cone shape flame effect?

Make some fading gradient texture on a cylinder and set it to additive filtering, then add some billboarded planes for glow and suchlike. Then just play around with a particle emiter, and you should get it.

Hmm, well Ive made a very simple animation as the base, namely a cone with a graident which gets stretched and contracted in a cycle. However for one reason or another it doesnt seem to export with the "Walk" animation. I set the controllers, key frames, textures, etc...

EDIT: Scratch that, it works.